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Egyptian Government Corruption Seems Alive & Well

Coat of Arms of Egypt, Official version. Government Website (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Unfortunately for the Egyptian people, one official that was good at rooting out such corruption has been fired from his job. Webzine Al-Monitor is reporting that Hisham Geneina, the head of the Accountability State Authority (ASA) has been relieved of his job by President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. Apparently Geneina's former deputy has his boss's job.

Many were expecting this decision months before its issuance, given the fierce campaign waged against Geneina due to statements he made to Egyptian daily Al-Youm Al-Sabea in December 2015, which claimed that the cost of corruption had reached 600 billion Egyptian pounds (around $76 billion) in 2015. These statements stirred a nationwide controversy in Egypt.Consequently, Sisi formed a commission tasked with investigating these claims, headed by the chief of the Administrative Control Authority and assisted by Badawi, deputy head of the ASA, in addition to three representatives of the Ministries of Interior, Planning and Finance.

A Best Buy Geek Squad Volkswagen New Beetle. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I had previously covered this here in a post earlier this past January. Now the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has announced that they are suing the FBI for the list of informants they used at Geek Squad.
The EFF also posted to their members blog the reasons why they wish to uncover these informants.

The reasoning from EFF's post:

"Sending your computer to Best Buy for repairs shouldn’t require you to surrender your Fourth Amendment rights. But that’s apparently what’s been happening when customers send their computers to a Geek Squad repair facility in Kentucky.

We think the FBI’s use of Best Buy Geek Squad employees to search people’s computers without a warrant threatens to circumvent people’s constitutional rights. That’s why we filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit today against the FBI seeking records about the extent to which it directs and trains Best Buy employees to conduct warr…

From the wonderful conference 'IdeaCity' comes this presentation from Dr Shaf Keshavjee and the great work he and his team perform at Toronto General Hospital. The world's first successful lung transplant was done here in the early 80s. Enjoy.